I’ve managed to make two trips into the swamp in the past two days. I’ve been trying to shoot a fully dressed, explorer style video, and the low tides aren’t giving me much with which to work, so I started shooting yesterday and I finished today in a different location.
The locations I selected worked well, in spite of the lackluster tides. Actually, the low tide wasn’t too bad, today, but it didn’t last long. My video ends with the tide covering the mud where I just drowned. Oh, sorry I gave away the ending.
So, this clip has about 8.5 minutes of setup (including a crotch-deep sink in the woods from which I escaped after a brief struggle. The clip opens as I walk in the creek, wearing tight jeans, a sleeveless top and boots. After that, I am seen, pulling my kayak up a muddy canal. I go from there into the woods where I discover some very soft ground and get my legs stuck in the thick mud. Once I get free, I crawl to safety, stand up and wander off in my muddy jeans.
The next day finds me in the same outfit but slogging through some scary mud along the Newport River. As you can see in the image in the upper left, I get my jeans pretty muddy.
At 8 minutes, 30 seconds into the video, I fall into the mud while trying to remove a piece of trash. The mud turns out to be shallow, so I think, how silly of me to not just step out into it to pick up the trash? After all, I was already muddy. Then, I discover that I’m sinking deeper. The bottom was actually quicksand, and my body was making a steady descent.
As these things go, the quicksand takes it’s time, once the victim is trapped. The entire sink took around 15 minutes. The tide and the quicksand were in competition to see which one would get me first. It was more or less a tie.
So, this clip begins with wet jeans and moves on to muddy jeans in the woods, then continues with muddy jeans along the river and finally a death by quicksand scene. I had a good deal of video from two days of shooting, and I edited it down to the best parts. Also, since the sink lasted so long and I didn’t want to edit parts of it out, I had to keep the setup under 10 minutes. It’s still kind of a long setup, but it’s full of fun stuff for lovers of jeans and boots in the swamp.
I only wish I had had more time today. There were so many more places I could have explored along the river. Here is a direct link to the clip: Two Days in the Swamp, 2015-08-22